The Tetragrammaton and Breathing

So, have you heard the one about how the Hebrew name for God, often spelled in English YHWH, is related to the sound of breathing? Google it and you'll find people talking about it, both affirming it and critically examining it. 

I myself am not sure what to make of this idea. 

Well, let me clarify. I don't take the idea seriously as an accurate explanation for the origins of the name YHWH. There is nothing in the Bible or, as far as I can tell, Second Temple Judaism reflecting this idea relating God's name to breathing. There were, in fact, ancient ideas explaining the meaning of God's name, but not in relation to breathing. The Bible itself has an explanation, in the revelation to Moses at the bush, when the Name is explained in reference to the verb "to be" (hayah in Hebrew). And I think most scholars would accept that there is indeed a relationship between the name YHWH and the Hebrew verb for being. Nothing about breathing here. (Of course, you can't "be" if you don't breathe, but anyway.) 

But I am curious about the origins of this connection to breathing. Of course, I am quite certain that most people who repeat this explanation for God's name have done no research on the matter. I just heard this idea promoted in church a couple weeks ago, and I think the guy who said it was telling us that this is an ancient idea, the correct explanation for the origins of the name—which is clearly wrong. But, still, where did the idea come from? Who first said it? 

I don't know, and I'm not going to do any research right now on it, other than googling. That has led me to a Nooma video by Rob Bell, called "Breathe," published I think in 2005 or so. And Bell does indeed mention this idea at about the 4:00 mark, and he attributes it to "the ancient rabbis." 

Is Bell right? I don't know. As my teachers at Hebrew Union often said, rabbinic literature is a vast corpus with many viewpoints. I could imagine something in rabbinic literature, or lets say, the post-rabbinic Jewish mystical tradition, connecting the Tetragrammaton to breath—not necessarily as an attempt at explaining the origins of the Name, but as an attempt to give (further) mystical meaning to the Name. I could imagine this idea being mentioned by more recent rabbis, and thence entering Christian discourse. But this is all just guesswork. I have only ever actually encountered the idea in very recent Christian popular speakers. 

I have looked in Wilkinson's book on the Tetragrammaton and came up empty (and Meyer's book). I'll report back if I discover more. 

Pre-Order My Apocrypha Book

My book The Apocrypha through History (OUP) will be published in America in July, and Amazon now has it available for pre-order. Don't look at the price, just buy it. Really, wouldn't you be willing to pay any price for a book with the subtitle The Canonical Reception of the Deuterocanonical Literature? Wow, that sounds exciting! 

Here's the table of contents. 

1. What Are the Apocrypha? 
2. Jewish Scripture at the Birth of Christianity
3. The Apocrypha in the New Testament
4. Jewish Use of the Deuterocanonicals
5. The Patristic Age
6. The Medieval West
7. The Sixteenth Century
8. The Orthodox Tradition
9. The English Bible
10. Does It Matter? 

Pre-Order My Next Book (But One)

Near the end of the first chapter of her autobiography, St. Térèse of Lisieux recounts a dream she had when she was young, in which a couple of devils played near her home until they saw here and ran in fright. She comments on the significance of the dream: "I do not suppose this dream was very extraordinary, but I do think God made use of it to show me that a soul in the state of grace need never be afraid of the devil, who is such a coward that even the gaze of a child will frighten him away" (this edition, p. 13). 

I thought of this passage when reading the blurb by John Mark Hicks for my forthcoming book Satan and His Friends (ACU Press), which is now available for pre-order from Amazon. I like very much how the cover turned out, and the price is nice at $22.99. 

Here is John Mark's blurb, copied from Amazon. 

Drawing on the ancient Near Eastern context, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christian interpretation, Edmon L. Gallagher unveils how disputed and uncertain many widely accepted views are. Gallagher walks us through the texts about the unseen realm and provides an account that is more restrained in his conclusions in contrast to what one might often hear from Christian pulpits. Reading this book is a healthy exercise in exegetical and theological caution. I appreciate where he ultimately lands—God is sovereign, Christ is victor, and we do not fear the unseen forces. I recommend the book as an alternative perspective to the dominant popular conceptions of the heavenly realm.

I appreciate John Mark for reading my book and supplying the recommendation. 

As the title of this post hints, this book on Satan is not actually my next book scheduled for publication, though it is my next book scheduled for publication in America. A few months before this Satan book is published in July, my Apocrypha book will be published by OUP in the UK, and that book is available for pre-order on the UK Amazon. But it's not yet available for pre-order on the American version of Amazon, though there is a page dedicated to it that provides information and a cover image. It will be published in America a week after my Satan book. When I notice it available for pre-order on Amazon.com, I'll post about it. 

What Manner of Man Is This?

I've been doing my daily Bible reading from the King James Version, I guess partly because I feel like I'm finally smart enough to understand most the words. So today I read Mark 4, which at the end contains an account of Jesus stilling the storm. This surprising power from their master baffles the disciples, who then ask, "What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" 

I stopped at that "What manner of man is this," because those precise words were familiar to me, but not from the Bible. But let me explain why reading from the KJV was important to this insight. The Bible I carry with me to church is the NRSV, which says here, "Who then is this?"—a very close approximation of the Greek. It's the same in the ESV, and the NET Bible, which are the only ones I have checked. So until today I didn't realize that the same question was expressed in the most popular English version ever with the words "what manner of man is this?" 

When I read those words at the end of Mark 4, I immediately thought of a man locked in a castle in Transylvania, looking out his window to see his captor crawl out of a lower window and down the castle wall in lizard fashion. I'll let Jonathan Harker explain. 

What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—in awful fear—and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of....

This is the end of Jonathan Harker's diary entry from May 12, in chapter 3 of the novel Dracula. It is at this moment that Harker realizes that the being who has confined him in the castle is no ordinary man. Well, there have been previous hints, but this crawling along the wall—though Harker himself goes on to accomplish the same feat, twice—provides the strongest clue. 

I don't know if Bram Stoker had the disciples' bewildered query in mind when he wrote of Harker's own shock, but I can imagine that the phrasing stuck in his head and he decided to reuse it in a very different context. Perhaps I am underselling how ordinary the expression is, particularly 130 years ago, but it does strike me as plausible that Harker's expression has been influenced somehow by the Bible reading that Stoker has experienced in church. 

Just about every October, I listen to this reading of Stoker's wonderful novel (I've listened to it 10-12 times), so there has been plenty of opportunity for phrasings from the novel to stick in my mind. You can hear the reading of the passage quoted above in this video, starting at about 20:30. This past October I gave a chapel speech on the novel (available at FaceBook). 

I wonder if this is the first time that someone reading the Bible has thought, that sounds like Dracula, rather than the reverse.